


Knock Knock

by Jaelijn



Series: B7 Trope Fics [3]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Vila receives a message.For the trope: "Epistolary" (which I interpret very loosely)





	Knock Knock

**Author's Note:**

> This might be one of the sillier things I've written for this fandom, just for its premise - but I hope it's enjoyable. :P
> 
> (Remember when I asked for knock knock jokes on tumblr? Yeah.)

_Test_ , it said.

Vila had been relaxing on his off-watch, curled up with one of the digital readers they had unearthed from the holds – like anything else they owned, really. Avon had taken them away as soon as they had found them, to make sure that they were safe – Blake’s words, not Avon’s – and had eventually returned them slightly reprogrammed to be more user-friendly. Or rather, more like what they were used to from Federation technology. Vila had since found that the original alien programming was still there, merely hidden, though really no one but Avon could do anything with it. Most of them just used the things to read or research or play games. They’d got a few things via Zen and Avon had managed to transfer them onto the readers. At any rate, the device had never done anything particularly spectacular.

Until, while Vila was reading, a little light flashed up at the top of it, and a message popped up on the screen.

 _Test_ , was all that it said.

Vila stared at it, equal parts intrigued and disquieted. There was no indication of where the message had come from, whether it was a system’s hiccough or an attempt at communication. Vila tapped at it.

Immediately, a messaging screen opened. It looked very like the ones that Vila had seen on personal devices on Earth, not that he had ever really owned one. They were too expensive to buy and too dangerous to steal, and besides, with whom should he have messaged? It was far too much of a risk, in his profession.

Vila stared at the input field for a moment, then decided to do the safe thing. He shut off the screen, hefted the reader under his arm, and went to find Avon.

 

Finding Avon was sometimes easier said than done, if he was off exploring one of the _Liberator_ ’s systems, but this time he was on the flight deck – alone, and therefore evidently on watch, but also up to the elbows in one of Zen’s consoles.

“Avon?”

“I’m busy,” came the immediate response, muffled as it was directed towards the console under which Avon grouched rather than at Vila. A moment of silence later, Avon looked up, scowling. “What do you want?”

The venom in Avon’s voice took Vila by surprise, and he involuntarily stepped backwards.

Avon saw him do it, of course, and his lips curled. “Well?”

“Never mind.”

“You interrupted me to say _never mind_?”

“There’s no use talking to you when you’re in this kind of mood,” Vila shot back, unwilling to back down before Avon now. “It wasn’t important anyway.”

Avon’s attention had already returned to the console. “As you like, Vila.”

In with that, the conversation was clearly closed.

Vila wandered back to his room, annoyance at Avon warrying with his disquiet about the sudden message. He sat at his desk and activated the screen again. The message was still there, _Test_ , in neat, innocuous letters.

Vila took a deep breath and typed into the input field: _Knock knock._

Nothing happened immediately, and Vila let out his breath. At least the thing hadn’t blown up. Perhaps it would be fine if he kept his responses impersonal? There were machines that could recite jokes, even if they couldn’t invent them; whoever was on the other end needn’t even know that he was human.

Suddenly, the message light flashed again, and there, under his reply, was: _Who’s there?_

Whoever they were, they _had_ heard of knock knock jokes. Full of anticipation, Vila typed: _Robin_.

This time, the pause before the reply seemed shorter, but perhaps his excitement was playing tricks on him. There was a thrill in this, a shiver of danger down his spine. Sooner or later, he _would_ have to show Avon, but for now…

 _Robin who?_ his conversation partner had sent.

Gleefully, Vila wrote back: _Robin you! Hand over your credits!_

And waited. And waited.

Eventually, Vila went back to his reading. Perhaps it had been a fluke. A computer or AI hiccough. Perhaps it had been Zen. And now that the joke was over, the script was done, and no more messages would come along. At some point, Vila heard Avon come back to his cabin next door, but his own shift wouldn’t be for another couple of hours – just before Avon was up again, in fact – so Vila happily ignored it.

He was trying to decide between finding something to eat and having a little sleep when the message light flashed again. With a rapidly beating heart, Vila picked up the reader.

_Your humour needs work._

_Who are you?_ Vila typed into the input field, then deleted it. If he asked that, the other might return the question, and Vila couldn’t answer. Instead, he wrote: _You have suggestions?_

 _Knock knock_.

Vila stared at it. A faulty computer programme, after all? Or a suggestion? _Who’s there_?

 _Knock_.

 _Not_ just a repetition of their previous conversation at least. The answers were coming almost immediately now, too. _Knock who?_

_Knock knock._

Vila groaned, but couldn’t suppress a faint smile. _You think that’s an improvement?_

 _It’s difficult to improve knock knock jokes_ , came the reply.

_You could try another kind of joke._

_No_.

 _Why are you talking to me?_ That seemed a safe enough question.

 _It’s a test_.

Vila stared at the message, and, abruptly uneasy again, powered down the device.

He went to bed, feeling a bit like a coward, and a bit like he had made the sensible decision. He would talk to Avon tomorrow.

 

Only by the morrow, Blake had come up with a new plan to get at the Federation, and for nearly a week Vila sat shivering in a tent on some waterlogged planet, cold and wet and muddy, waiting for a rebel contact. His only consolation was that Avon and Blake were there with him, looking at least as bedraggled and just as displeased as he felt.

When they were finally back on the _Liberator_ , he had all but forgotten about the ominous messages, and, curled up in the warmth of his bed, switched on his reader without a second thought.

There was one new message, send a little while after the one before. _Apologies. That sounded more menacing than it was meant._

It made Vila feel better – more as though there really were a human on the other side, even if he couldn’t be entirely certain of their intention. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the input field and wrote: _Are you still there?_

He didn’t expect an immediate answer, but before he had a chance to pick a novel to read, he got one – just a single word: _Yes_.

_You’re not spying on me, are you?_

_I can only see what you message me._

_Good. Do you have a name?_

_Yes._

Vila waited for a moment, but nothing else came. _Very funny_ , he wrote back. _What do I call you?_

_Is this the first question you ask when someone sends you messages out of the blue?_

Vila got the feeling he was being laughed at. _No; my first question was “Why are you talking to me?” but I didn’t get a proper answer, did I?_

_Perhaps I’m lonely._

_You said it was a test._

_Yes._

_What kind of test?_

_Do you expect me to answer that?_

Vila gritted his teeth. _No._

_Then why ask?_

_Perhaps I’m lonely, too._

A sound from next door distracted Vila for a moment – it sounded like it might have been Avon, laughing. That couldn’t mean well for someone; Vila only hoped it wasn’t him.

 _What’s your name?_ he typed, trying for persistence.

_Ak._

For a moment, Vila believed that it had been a typing error, but no correction followed it. _What kind of name is that?_

_A fake one._

Vila grinned. _All right, Ak. You can call me…_ He paused, thinking. He’d had ample of practice coming up with aliases, back on Earth, but sometimes it was hard to remember which he had already used and where. No good identifying as someone who’d been linked to a crime. _… Liv_.

_A fake name?_

_Maybe_ , Vila conceded. _How was your day?_

_Now that we have exchanged names you expect us to exchange our daily lives, as well?_

Vila ignored the slightly acerbic tone of the message and wrote: _I think I caught a cold at work today._

There was a bit of a pause, then: _I’m sorry._

 _I don’t want to see water ever again_.

 

Over the next weeks, and regular conversations with “Ak”, Vila often thought about whether or not he shouldn’t show Avon, after all. But Ak, while occasionally evasive, seemed harmless enough. He – they had established at some point that that was the pronoun he preferred – never asked Vila for any identifying information – hadn’t even asked for a name. Vila shared some anecdotes about life on the _Liberator_ , but always in a way that would make it impossible to tell whether he was writing from a dome or a colony planet or a space ship. He even asked Ak for recommendations, now and then – recipes, books, music, vidcasts, games. Evidently, Ak had a taste for gambling, and sometimes they would fetch the same game from the computer systems and see who could beat it faster. Vila had no way to check, of course, whether Ak was telling the truth, but he let Vila win often enough, so it didn’t really matter in the end.

Vila found himself looking forward to their chats, even opting to skip the odd dinner with Gan to return to his reader. The others noticed, of course, and when they asked what he was doing, he told them that he was reading. It wasn’t entirely a lie. To Vila’s surprise, it was Avon who came to his defence, in a round-about way: “Oh, let him. It can hardly do any harm if he fills what passes for his brain with more nonsense.” Of course, Avon would have been livid if he’d known that Vila was talking to someone outside the _Liberator_ , someone who might well be a Federation spy, but Vila had researched and checked – apart from his messages, his reader wasn’t transmitting any data. So all he had to do to be safe was watch what he told Ak – and it wasn’t that hard. After all, Ak didn’t share a lot of personal information, either.

Sometimes, he would disappear for days on end, not replying, only to reappear and pretend he hadn’t been away at all. Vila had asked him where he’d been, but never received a proper answer. Then again, Vila had his own periods of being away, whenever Blake’s missions took them somewhere, and once, because he’d got food poisoning and felt too ill to do much of anything for about a week. Ak send him a worried message then, but otherwise seemed to be fairly comfortable with breaks in their conversations. Well, he would have to be, with his own disappearances that he refused to explain.

At any rate, there wasn’t a whole lot that Vila knew about Ak – he knew his taste in literature and games, and his sense of humour, and that he hated sweet drinks made from vegetables, but Vila didn’t know where he lived, whether he had family, what his work was, or his name, how old he was and which grade he had – the breadth of his knowledge suggested Alpha, but then Vila was the best example that appearances could be deceiving. He might not even come from a planet with a grade system. For all Vila knew, Ak could be a hairy alien, though he seemed too well-versed in cultural references from Earth for that. But he was nice to talk to, and it was nice to have a friend other than the crew, about at least half of which Vila had no idea whether it would be wise to call them ‘friend’.

Only then, one day, Ak send a message that seemed so out of character that Vila thought at first it might have come from someone else – and if that happened, he would finally go to Avon with the whole thing, he’d promised himself. But the message was from Ak, tacked on to their last conversation as always: _I’m having a bad day._

Vila stared at the message, which had arrived a few hours earlier, and wondered what he should reply. He had complained to Ak plenty of times, who had always at least read what Vila had had to say and responded with a generic ‘I’m sorry’, or whatever was appropriate, but Ak wasn’t in the habit of doing that. When he volunteered something about himself, it was a new thing he had discovered, or a random fact he found interesting, or a trick in the game they were playing, nothing like this.

 _Are you all right?_ Vila typed finally, hoping that Ak would see it at all – it had been a while since he’d sent his message, but they never had any expectations for prompt answers. Only Vila knew what it felt like wanting to talk to someone and then find that they weren’t available, what it was like waiting for a response.

Now, the response came within a minute. _No. That’s what I said._

_Anything I can do?_

The pause was longer this time, then: _I don’t know why I’m telling you this._

 _Perhaps you’re lonely, too_? Vila wrote, trying to lighten the mood by recalling one of their very first conversations.

_Perhaps._

_Never mind. You got me._

There was no response after that, and Vila reluctantly abandoned the reader to show his face amongst the crew. He’d promised Gan to eat with him, and Vila _liked_ Gan. It didn’t feel right to ignore him as often as Vila had, of late. They met on the flight deck, where Cally was on watch, and headed down to the rec room together. Gan was telling him about his efforts to learn the _Liberator_ ’s operation – Vila never understood where Gan found the energy to be so hard-working – when they walked, quite literally, right into Avon. Caught off balance, the drink Avon had been carrying spilled all over Vila, and it was only because of Gan’s steadying hands that they all remained standing.

At least Avon’s drink hadn’t been hot.

Avon shrugged Gan’s hand off and summoned a glare. “Watch where you’re going,” he said – it sounded like it was supposed to be a snap, but ended up sounding… somehow tired.

Vila glanced up sharply, scanning Avon’s expression, and finding it tightly closed off. He didn’t look like he’d slept well, but that wasn’t exactly unusual.

“Do you want a fresh drink, Avon?” Gan asked, moving past them into the room.

Avon shook his head, and drained what remained in the glass, passing the empty one on to Gan, then looked Vila over. “Sorry, Vila.”

Vila plucked at his drenched shirt. “Never mind. At least it wasn’t hot, eh?” He grinned at him, but found no answering humour in Avon’s expression, which remained flat and his eyes blank. Vila dropped his shirt, his fingers coming away sticky. “I’ll go change – I’ll be right back, Gan.”

Gan nodded. “All right.”

“Where are you headed, Avon?” Vila prompted when Avon still hadn’t moved from the door.

Avon seemed to wrench himself back from wherever his mind had wandered. “Ah, my cabin.”

“Going the same way, then.” Vila shot a quick glance at Gan, and found him nodding in quiet understanding behind Avon’s back. “Come on, walk with me.” Vila touched Avon’s arm briefly, just to get him moving, but dropped his hand immediately when they fell in step with each other.

The silence between them was oppressive, but Avon didn’t seem to notice.

“Avon, are you all right?” Vila asked eventually, when they were nearing the corridor with their rooms.

“Of course,” Avon answered absently, and Vila believed him about as far as he could throw him.

“Yeah. Right,” Vila said, and Avon glanced at him sharply – at least that had brought some life back into his expression.

“You have problems of your own to worry about,” Avon said.

“So you’re admitting that there’s a problem?”

Avon’s expression closed off again and he hastened his steps, opening the door to his room with unnecessary force. “Get changed, Vila.” And with that, he had disappeared, the door slamming shut in Vila’s face.

Vila frowned at the door and plucked at his shirt again. This time, he brought his fingers to his lips and gave them a careful lick. Whatever Avon had wanted to drink was sweet, but even the sweetness couldn’t hide the sharp tang of chemicals underneath. Some kind of drug, medicine? It wouldn’t be the first time that Avon found a drug for some malady or other without running it by anyone of the others, but Vila couldn’t help wondering what it was, this time. It couldn’t have been that important, could it, if Avon hadn’t replaced the drink?

Vila finally turned from the closed door and went to change into a new shirt. He speculated with Gan a bit about Avon’s behaviour over dinner, then felt bad about it and changed the topic. When he finally returned to his cabin after his shift, the worry he had felt for Ak had almost entirely slipped his mind – only to rush back with a surge of guilt when Vila lay eyes on the reader. He snatched it up, finding just one new message.

_Thank you._

 

Conversations with Ak got quiet for a while after that. Vila once more thought about showing the messages to Avon, just to give the man something to focus on other than the stress that was affecting them all. Vila had been to complain to Cally about an upset stomach so often in the past few days even he was getting annoyed with it.

All the more welcome was it when Ak picked up their chats again, goading Vila into challenging him at another game – one which Vila found below his skill, but quite enjoyable, which he gleefully told Ak when he’d beaten it – apparently well ahead of Ak, who seemed to have run into some kind of difficulty in a fairly early level.

 _Perhaps you ought to pick something more challenging, next time_ , Vila told him.

_Quit bragging, Vila._

Vila nearly dropped the reader when the message appeared, then blinked, then switched the screen off and back on – but it was still there. His name, clear as day, in a message from Ak, whom Vila had _never_ told his real name. Who had no way of knowing Vila’s real name. Unless it had been a Federation trick, after all, or a malicious AI, and they were all going to die. But Ak had been a friend. He had never insisted on details Vila wasn’t willing to share, had rarely even asked for any information. Unless he had been playing for time, until they could break into the reader and spy on him.

Vila turned the device off, shoved it into an empty drawer and locked it, and went to find something to calm his raging pulse. A day later, he was drugged on a radiation-infested planet and forced to work in a mine until Avon came to their rescue, and that kind of thing tended to drive Ak from his mind. Vila just wanted to shower for a day and sleep for a week afterwards, but Cally wouldn’t let him – as it turned out, Alpha immunities were even worse than Vila had always suspected, and Blake and Jenna and even Avon, who had been down on the planet for mere minutes, were soon laid up with some sort of head cold that affected their balance and caused intermittent raging headaches.

With only three of them to pilot the ship and care for the rest, Vila hardly had a moment’s peace, about which he complained vocally when he went to take Avon his dinner and dose of medicine that Cally had prepared. Vila hadn’t precisely volunteered: Gan had refused to go near Avon when he was sick, and Cally was angry at Avon about something to do with what had happened at Horizon and had therefore decided that Vila was just the person for the job. Avon, at least, didn’t have a habit of interrupting Vila’s rants, unless he was trying to think – which, in his current state, he wasn’t. He was between headaches, but didn’t dare get up because of the dizziness, and was left staring listlessly at the ceiling while Vila tried to make space for the dinner tray on Avon’s worktable.

“What is all this, anyway? These parts look like they should be _in_ Zen, not lying around here.”

“They’re spares,” Avon mumbled. “Don’t break them.”

Vila sighed and left the table alone, shifting some clothes off a chair instead. It wasn’t as though Avon would want to sit up at the table, anyway. When he shifted a jacket, one of the readers slipped out from between the folds, and Vila only just caught it before it could impact heavily with the floor.

“Sorry,” he told Avon, and shifted the reader safely into his arm – only when he had caught it, he had activated the screen, and there, staring back at him, was his conversation with Ak.

Only _of course_ there had never been an “Ak”.

“You!” Vila exclaimed.

Avon dropped his hand from his eyes to look at him. “What.”

Vila held the reader under his nose. “It was _you_!”

Avon squinted at the screen and then pushed against Vila’s arm to move it to a distance where he could actually read it. “Ah yes. Of course it was me. You didn’t know?”  

Vila did not allow himself to feel embarrassed that he hadn’t figured it out immediately. Avon knew how the readers worked best out of all of them. It wasn’t even that the alias Avon had picked was all that complicated – just that sometimes Vila forgot that Avon _had_ a first name. And Vila hadn’t thought Avon could be that much fun, even though he felt that, lately, they’d been developing an understanding. And of course there had been that one time where Avon had been out of sorts – and Ak had said that he was having a bad day. _Avon_ had said all the things that Ak had told him, had read all the things that Vila had told Ak.

Avon shifted to prop himself up on his elbows. “You thought you were talking to a stranger, this whole time, and never told anyone? I thought your instinct for self-preservation was more finely tuned than that, Vila.”

“How was I supposed to know it was you? You never mentioned anything!”

“ _I_ thought _you_ had already figured it out.”

“I almost threw the reader out an airlock when you mentioned my name!”

“Under the circumstances, that might have been the most sensible thought you showed,” Avon spat, and then groaned, his hand going back to rub at his forehead. A muttered curse told Vila all he needed to know – the headache was coming back.

Vila dumped the clothes on a pile and propped the reader on top, finally placing the dinner on the newly freed chair. “Look, Avon…”

“What is it now.”

“Did we become friends, writing those messages? Even if I thought you were a different person? It was fun, wasn’t it, the jokes and the games and the conversation and the company?” 

Avon looked at him for a moment, then closed his eyes, sinking back into the pillow. The faintest of smiles tugged at his lips. “No more knock knock jokes, Vila.”

Vila decided to take that for a yes.


End file.
